Luther’s qualities of mind, heart, and attainment were transcendent.  Though naturally meek and diffident, when it came to matters of duty and conviction he was courageous, self-sacrificing, and brave beyond any mere man known to history.  Elijah fled before the threats of Jezebel, but no powers on earth could daunt the soul of Luther.  Even the apparitions of the devil himself could not disconcert him.

Roman Catholic authors agree that “Nature gave him a German industry and strength and an Italian spirit and vivacity,” and that “nobody excelled him in philosophy and theology, and nobody equaled him in eloquence.”

His mental range was not confined to any one set of subjects.  In the midst of his profound occupation with questions of divinity and the Church “his mind was literally world-wide.  His eyes were for ever observant of what was around him.  At a time when science was hardly out of its shell he had observed Nature with the liveliest curiosity.  He studied human nature like a dramatist.  Shakespeare himself drew from him.  His memory was a museum of historical information, anecdotes of great men, and old German literature, songs, and proverbs, to the latter of which he made many rich additions from his own genius.  Scarce a subject could be spoken of on which he had not thought and on which he had not something remarkable to say."[22] In consultations upon public affairs, when the most important things hung in peril, his contemporaries speak with amazement of the gigantic strength of his mind, the unexampled acuteness of his intellect, the breadth and loftiness of his understanding and counsels.

But, though so great a genius, he laid great stress on sound and thorough learning and study.  “The strength and glory of a town,” said he, “does not depend on its wealth, its walls, its great mansions, its powerful armaments, but in the number of its learned, serious, kind, and well-educated citizens.”  He was himself a great scholar, far beyond what we would suspect in so perturbed a life, or what he cared to parade in his writings.  He mastered the ancient languages, and insisted on the perpetual study of them as “the scabbard which holds the sword of the Spirit, the cases which enclose the precious jewels, the vessels which contain the old wine, the baskets which carry the loaves and the fishes for the feeding of the multitude.”  His associates say of him that he was a great reader, eagerly perusing the Church Fathers, old and new, and all histories, well retaining what he read, and using the same with great skill as occasion called.

Melanchthon, who knew him well, and knew well how to judge of men’s powers and attainments, said of him:  “He is too great, too wonderful, for me to describe.  Whatever he writes, whatever he utters, goes to the soul and fixes itself like arrows in the heart. He is a miracle among men.”